Political Prisoner Profile: Ngawang Choephel
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© TIN/Kathryn Cully
History of Campaign Ngawang Choephel is currently serving an 18 year prison sentence in Tibet for attempting to preserve the music and dance traditions of his homeland. He was detained in August 1995 on charges of “espionage”. His sentencing in 1996, was the longest given to a Tibetan for a political offence since 1989. Choephel, an American trained musicologist who fled Tibet with his family as a young child, was arrested after returning home to make a documentary on traditional music and dance. He was sentenced under China’s State Security Law on claims that his work was a cover for spying activities. Choephel has spent most of his detention in the remote high security Powo Tramo Labour Camp, 650 km east of Lhasa.

Ngawang Choephel’s Background
Born in Ngari in the north-west of central Tibet in 1966, Ngawang Choephel was only two years old when he and his mother, uncle and grandmother escaped to India. His father remained behind in order to help more people escape but was later captured by the Chinese and killed.

Choephel and his mother settled in a Tibetan refugee settlement in the southern Indian town of Mundgod. There he attended the Central School for Tibetans where he demonstrated a passion for Tibetan music and dance. He went on to study at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala and worked as a music teacher for six years in Central Schools for Tibetans.

Fulbright Scholar
In 1993 Ngawang Choephel was selected to study ethnomusicology in the United States under the Fulbright scholarship scheme for Tibetans. He spent a year at the prestigious Middlebury College in Vermont where his goal was to learn Western musical notation in order to translate and preserve traditional Tibetan music. While in the US, Choephel raised funds to make a film on the cultural and historical context of oral traditions in Tibetan music. In his funding proposal, Choephel said: “being born Tibetan, I feel that I am responsible for preserving the history and diversity of Tibetan oral tradition”.

Travels to Tibet
Choephel returned to India before setting off in July 1995, travelling on “Overseas Chinese” travel papers: as a refugee, he had travelled to the US on an Indian Identity Certificate, but the Chinese government refuses to recognise these certificates, which designate the holder as a “Tibetan exile”.

During his first month in Tibet, Choephel periodically sent his footage to Kathmandu. He had filmed 16 hours of traditional song and dance. From that footage, there is no indication that Choephel was involved in any political activity.

On August 22 1995, Kathryn Culley, an American photographer who travelled with Choephel during the early part of his trip, left Tibet from Lhasa. Choephel told her that he planned to visit Shigatse to look for musicians before returning to India in November.

Arrest
In early 1996 Dorji Rinchen, a Tibetan who had been released from Shigatse prison arrived in India with news that he had seen Choephel in gaol. Rinchen reported that Choephel had been arrested in the Shigatse market and that authorities had confiscated his travel documents, camera and videotapes.

Sentence
On 26 December, 1996, Radio Tibet announced that Choephel had been sentenced to 18 years in prison for spying. “In July 1995, Ngawang Choephel, who was sent by the Dalai clique with expenditures and equipment provided by a certain foreign country, entered to carry out his activities under the pretext of collecting information on folk songs and dances in Tibet,” the radio broadcast said, adding that he had “confessed to the above mentioned activities”. Choephel was sentenced under China’s State Security Law.

Mother Campaigns to Visit
After learning of her only child’s arrest, Choephel’s 62 year old mother, Sonam Dekyi, petitioned the Chinese Government through its embassy in New Delhi urging that her son be released or that she be allowed to visit him in prison.

To further her campaign she set up a lean-to tent shelter on a pavement in Jantar Mantar in the centre of New Delhi. She remained there for 15 months, and in late 1998, Tibet support groups arranged a two and a half month tour of the U.S. and Europe for her to lobby for international pressure to be exerted on China to allow her to visit her son and for his release.

Visit
In August, 2000, Sonam Dekyi was finally granted permission to see her son who had been moved from Powo Tramo prison to Chendgu supposedly to receive medical treatment. He is said to be suffering from lung, liver and stomach ailments and, as Dekyi explains, is very weak: “When I saw my son, I could not even recognise him. In front of me, separated by two counters and two layers of wire netting, stood this frail body that was merely skin and bones.”

Dekyi said, “when I inquired after his health, he held his chest and told me that he had constant pain there. With his forehead down on the counter, he broke down in front of me. We all cried for a long time until we were told that the visit would be terminated if we did not stop.”

Mother’s Appeal
Sixty-six year old Sonam Dekyi fears for the life of her son who is suffering serious physical and mental trauma in prison. “His health is deteriorating day by day and if he does not receive timely and adequate medical treatment soon, he may not survive. I make an urgent appeal to the international community and in particular to the Chinese government to hand over my only son to me for medical treatment”.